Okay, so here i am planning on building a pretty straightforward megaproject, the Great Urist Dam. Its a 5x5 embark location, with a nice brook in a valley splitting the landscape in two. About 10-15z levels of mountains on both sides from the ground (brook) level.
The dam i'm planning would split the map in half, and would be about 10 z high. Here are the things im wondering about:
- Can an area this large be filled without the water evaporating and / or the game dying halfway through the filling process? after all, we are talking about 2x2 embark tiles worth of water, 8-9 z levels high on average.
- Would the water getting in contact with the original brook cause me any problems? I do not intend to block its path, but as we all know, water travels down first and then it teleports onto the first accessible open square on that level, so i guess it would try to fill the riverbed i'm pumping from. I guess i might have to install some floodgates there to prevent the stuff im pumping from flowing out under the dam. How about after i filled the dam? Would i open the floodgates, i figure the whole lake would empty itself kinda fast into the brook. I think the solution to my problem is to build floorin above the part of the brook that flows under my artificial lake.
- Last, but not least, it is a temperate area, with freezing winters. Am i right in the assumption, that the whole artificial lake would try to freeze during the winter essentially killing my game next spring when it tries to thaw? It would mean, that i either need to build another floor above the water reservoire, or turn off temperatures for the game.
Another interesting feature would be the artificial waterfall that goes around my staircase. It is driven by a 20 z high pump stack of 3 pumps on each level pumping water from an underground tank to the top of the stairs, where it falls around the stairs down right into the tank. My concern here is that such a large body of water being moved would effectively kill my framerate, even without the dam and the rest of the game to begin with.
Any of you done similar things in the past? Whats your experience with these things?